How Much is 'Candy Crush' Worth? $5.9 Billion, Apparently

Today in nonsensically huge technology company acquisitions: Activision Blizzard, the biggest publisher in video games, is set to purchase King, the maker of Candy Crush Saga, to the tune of $5.9 billion.

The two companies announced the deal on Nov. 2, with the sale expected to be completed in Spring 2016. According to Activision’s press release, that’ll give the company more than “half a billion monthly active users in 196 countries.” In other words, it’s big.

Activision Blizzard is best known for owning some of the biggest properties in games, including Destiny, Call of Duty and the still-giant World of Warcraft. King, meanwhile, owns the stupidly successful mobile game Candy Crush Saga, as well as Candy Crush Soda Saga and Bubble Witch Saga. As Polygon notes, the company reportedly made about $2.1 billion last year off its mobile games on the iTunes App Store and Google Play store, with three of the top 10 grossing games on iOS and Android for the year.

Activision has some presence in the mobile market but it’s clearly looking to bite off a bigger piece of the fast-growing, hugely lucrative pie. In its release, the company said mobile gaming is expected to generate about $36 billion by the end of 2015 and increase that number by half between now and 2019.

Here’s hoping Mr. Toffee is a multiplayer character in next year’s Call of Duty, as the ability to shoot the candy-addled cartoon would definitely be worth several billion dollars.